There are some things about myself that I’d rather not realize. This is one of them.
Facebook recently started sending me regular “report cards” about my posting performance.
“You’ve recently been posting less often,” it said. “Create new content to catch up.”
Catch up to what?
I don’t work for Facebook. Nobody is paying me to keep its users entertained. I have no obligation to feed its endless appetite for photos, videos, jokes, observations or essays. Yet the notification implied that posting regularly was somehow my responsibility — and it gently encouraged me to get back to work.
The message irritated me.
At first, I thought I knew why. Like most people, I don’t enjoy software telling me how to behave. The platform wants more content because more content keeps people scrolling, which benefits Meta. That much is obvious.
But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that wasn’t the real reason the notification bothered me.
The real reason was that it touched a nerve I didn’t want to acknowledge. I’ve become an unpaid sharecropper on the social media plantation — and I’ve let myself be brainwashed to crave the attention that the platforms promise me.

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